Rich Hofmann

DAILY NEWS SPORTS EDITOR

Rich Hofmann arrived at the Daily News in 1980 for a job whose status was officially designated as "full-time, temporary." A senior at Penn at the time, he was hired to fill in on the copy desk during a staff illness. The notion of him covering the Eagles or being a columnist did not exist in anyone's imagination. It was supposed to be six weeks and out, but he never left. It is only one of the reasons why so many people have concerns about him as a potential house guest.

We can just add this to the list of questions, when it comes to the history of the Eagles franchise, to which we are never going to receive a satisfactory answer.

What if they had hired Jeff Fisher instead of Rich Kotite?

Did Donovan McNabb throw up at the Super Bowl?

Did they really want Steve Spagnuolo?

Andy Reid tried Tuesday to answer the question, but he was typically all over the place. In his first pass at the issue, Reid said that he offered Spagnuolo a job as a "place to land" in case nothing else came open. Then, with more probing, he said that it wasn't really like that, and that he really did try to get Spagnuolo to come back to the Eagles after being fired as the Rams' head coach.

Reid said he never got to the point where he considered replacing defensive coordinator Juan Castillo, and that even if Spagnuolo had agreed to join the Eagles' staff, it would have been because they liked the idea of bringing in that kind of defensive mind and that titles didn't really matter.

All of which means that, even though Reid did discuss this at a greater length than most people expected, given his history, we still really don't know the Eagles' level of interest, and what would have been the hierarchy on the defensive staff if Spagnuolo had been brought in. We also don't know if new secondary coach Todd Bowles will have a greater voice than a typical secondary coach.

We don't know anything, execpt this:

That Spagnuolo did have a job offer here, and that he chose to become the New Orleans Saints' defensive coordinator instead, and that he did it for a very good reason: